Inhofe worked as a businessman for three decades before becoming a full-time politician.[4] He worked in the field of aviation, as a real estate developer, and in insurance, eventually becoming the president of the Quaker Life Insurance Company. During the time he worked for Quaker Life, the company went into receivership; it was liquidated in 1986.[5]

Mayor of Tulsa

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

In 1986, when Congressman Jones decided to retire to run for the U.S. Senate. Inhofe ran for the 1st District and won the Republican primary with 54%.[16] In the general election, he defeated Democrat Gary Allison 55%-43%.[17] In 1988, he won re-election against Democrat Kurt Glassco, Governor George Nigh's legal counsel, 53%-47%.[18] In 1990, he defeated Glassco in a rematch 56%-44%.[19] After redistricting, the 1st District contained only two counties, all of Tulsa and some parts of Wagoner. In 1992, he won re-election with 53% of the vote.[20]

Tenure

In 1987, he voted against President Ronald Reagan's budget, which included tax increases and no increase in defense spending.[21]

He first came to national attention in 1993, when he led the effort to reform the House's discharge petition rule, which the House leadership had long used to bottle up bills in committee.

U.S. Senate

Elections

In 1994, incumbent Senator David Boren, who had been serving in the Senate since 1979, agreed to become president of the University of Oklahoma and announced he would resign as soon as a successor was elected. Inhofe was elected Senator Boren's successor in this nationally historic election cycle that saw the Republican Party take both houses of Congress and the Oklahoma governorship (the latter for only the second time in state history). Inhofe took the office on November 16 and took the next day, his 60th birthday, giving him a bit more senatorial seniority than the incoming class of senators. After serving the last two years of Boren's term, he won his first full term in 1996. He was reelected in 2002 and 2008.

Tenure

Fundraising

In the 2008 election cycle, Inhofe's largest campaign donors represented the oil and gas ($446,900 in donations), leadership PACs ($316,720) and electric utilities ($221,654) industries/categories.[22][23] In 2010, his largest donors represented the oil and gas ($429,950) and electric utilities ($206,654).[24]

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, he was among the panelists questioning witnesses about the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, stating he was "outraged by the outrage" over the revelations of abuse. Although he believed that the individuals responsible for mistreating prisoners should be punished, he stated that the prisoners "are not there for traffic violations . . . they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents".[27][28] In 2006, Inhofe was one of only nine senators to vote against the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 which prohibits "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of individuals in U.S. Government custody.[29][30]

Caucus memberships

Ideology and opinions

Inhofe is one of the most conservative members of either house of Congress (the eighth-most conservative senator, according to the March 2007 National Journal rankings of Liberal/Conservative members of Congress.[31])

Environmental issues

Since 2003, when he was first elected Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Inhofe has been the foremost Republican promoting arguments for climate change denial in the global warming controversy. He famously said in the Senate that global warming is a hoax, has invited contrarians to testify in Committee hearings, and spread his views both via the Committee website run by Marc Morano, and through his access to conservative media such as Fox News.[32][33] In 2012, Inhofe's The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future was published by WorldNetDaily Books, presenting his global warming conspiracy theory.[34] He said that, because "God's still up there", the "arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."[35][36][37] However, he says he appreciates that this doesn't win arguments, and he has "never pointed to Scriptures in a debate, because I know this would discredit me." His opposition to climate action is as much based on concerns about over-regulation of businesses, and he has shown ability to work with his Senate opponents on other issues: in 2003 he co-sponsored legislation to protect the Kemp's ridley sea turtle.[38]

As Environment and Public Works chairman, Inhofe made a two hour long Senate Floor speech on 28 July 2003 in the context of discussions on the McCain-Lieberman Bill.[42] He said he was "going to expose the most powerful, most highly financed lobby in Washington, the far left environmental extremists", and laid out in detail his opposition to attribution of recent climate change to humans, using the word "hoax" four times including the statement that he had "offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax", and his conclusion expressing his belief that "manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".[43][44] He supported what he called "sound science" with citations from scientists; contrarians including Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Sallie Baliunas as week as some mainstream scientists. Two of these, Tom Wigley and Stephen Schneider, later issued statements that Inhofe had misrepresented their work.[44][45]

On 29 July, the day after his Senate speech, Inhofe chaired an Environment and Public Works hearing with contrarian views represented by Baliunas and David Legates, and praised their "1,000-year climate study", then involved in the Soon and Baliunas controversy, as "a powerful new work of science". Against them, Michael E. Mann defended mainstream science and specifically his work which they and the Bush administration disputed in the hockey stick controversy.[46][42] During the hearing Senator Jim Jeffords read out an email from Hans von Storch saying he had resigned as editor in chief of the journal which had published the Soon and Baliunas paper, as the peer-review had "failed to detect significant methodological flaws in the paper" and the critique published by Mann and colleagues was valid.[46][47]

In a continuation of these themes, Inhofe had a 20-page brochure published under the Seal of the United States Senate reiterating his "hoax" statement, comparing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to a "Soviet style trial", and in a section headed "The IPCC Plays Hockey" he attacked what he called "Mann's flawed, limited research."[48][49] The brochure restated themes from Inhofe's Senate speech, and in December 2003 he distributed copies of it in Milan at a meeting discussing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where he met "green activists" with posters quoting him as saying that global warming "is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people". Showing good humor, he signed a poster for them,[40] and thanked them for quoting him correctly. In an October 2004 Senate speech he said "Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. It was true when I said it before, and it remains true today. Perhaps what has made this hoax so effective is that we hear over and over that the science is settled and there is a consensus that, unless we fundamentally change our way of life by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, we will cause catastrophic global warming. This is simply a false statement."[48][50] In January 2005 Inhofe told Bloomberg News that global warming was "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state", and carbon dioxide would not be restricted by the Clear Skies Act of 2003.[51][52][53] In a Senate Floor "update", he extended his argument against Mann's work by extensively citing Michael Crichton's fictional thriller, State of Fear, mistakenly describing Crichton as a "scientist".[54] On 28 August 2005, at Inhofe's invitation, Chrichton appeared as an expert witness at a hearing on climate change, disputing Mann's work.[48]

In a September 2006 Senate speech, Inhofe argued that the threat of global warming was exaggerated by "the media, Hollywoodelites and our pop culture". He said that in the 1960s the media had switched from warning of global warming to warning of global cooling and a coming ice age, then in the 1970s had returned to warming to promote "climate change fears".[57] In February 2007 he told Fox News that mainstream science increasingly attributed climate change to natural causes, and only "those individuals on the far left, such as Hollywood liberals and the United Nations" opposed this.[58]

In July 2010 Inhofe stated, "I don't think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago. Now, that's not me talking, those are the scientists that say that." The Union of Concerned Scientists said that what Inhofe stated was wrong, pointing to an NOAA report indicating that, through July, 2010 had been the hottest summer on record since 1880. Inhofe added that "People on the other side of this argument back in January, they said, 'Inhofe, it has nothing to do with today's or this month or next month. We're looking at a long period of time. We go into twenty year periods.'"[71][72][73]

During a House committee hearing in 2011, Inhofe testified, "I have to admit—and, you know, confession is good for the soul... I, too, once thought that catastrophic global warming was caused by anthropogenic gases—because everyone said it was."[74] Under questioning from committee member Jay Inslee, Inhofe dismissed the notion that he was less knowledgeable than climate scientists, saying that he'd already given "five speeches on the science."[74]

On 21 January 2015, Inhofe returned to chairing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, as part of a new Republican majority in the Senate. In response to reports by NOAA and NASA that 2014 had been the warmest globally in the temperature record, he said "we had the coldest in the western hemisphere in the same time frame", and attributed changes to a 30-year cycle, not human activities.[75] In a debate on the same day about a bill for the Keystone XL pipeline, Inhofe endorsed an amendment proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, "Climate change is real and not a hoax", which passed 98–1. Inhofe clarified his view that "Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will. There is archaeological evidence of that, there is biblical evidence of that, there is historical evidence of that", but added that "there are some people who are so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change climate."[76]

Israel

In March 2002, Inhofe made a speech before the U.S. Senate that included the explicit suggestion that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a form of divine retribution against the U.S. for failing to defend Israel. In his words: "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our Government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."[77]

Syria

Inhofe, while offering no specific alternatives himself, has condemned President Barack Obama's "inaction" on Syria.[78]

In the debate, Inhofe cited a 2005 Zogby Poll[79] showing 84% of Americans support making English the official language of governmental operations, including 71% of Hispanics. He also noted that 27 states and 51 nations have made English their official language and that the Office of Management and Budget estimated that it costs taxpayers between $1–2 billion to provide language assistance under President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 13166 that created the entitlement to services provided in any language other than English.

LGBT rights

Inhofe points at large photograph of his family, proclaiming none have been divorced or LGBT

Inhofe has generally been seen as overtly hostile by LGBT advocacy groups, earning a 0% in every one of his terms on Human Rights Campaign's position scorecard.[80] Inhofe is in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against adding sexual orientation to the definition of hate crimes, and voted against prohibiting job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.[81] Inhofe's office has said he "does not hire openly gay staffers due to the possibility of a conflict of agenda."[82]

Inhofe campaigned for his Senate seat in 1994 using the phrase "God, guns, and gays."[83][84] This phrase came to be a popular term for GOP campaign strategy, with Howard Dean and other politicians using it in the 2004 election cycle.[85] In 2008, his campaign was noted by the Associated Press for running an ad with "anti-gay overtones" featuring a wedding cake with two male figures on top, fading into his opponent's face.[86]

Inhofe agreed to support legislation allowing military mental health specialists to talk with veterans about private firearms in an effort to reduce suicides.[89]

Misconduct while piloting an aircraft in 2010

Trained by the US Navy, Inhofe is one of the few members of Congress who is licensed as a commercial pilot. In 1994, when he first ran for the U.S. Senate, he used his plane as a daily campaign vehicle to crisscross Oklahoma and visit almost every town in the state.[90] He has been influential in Senate and Congressional debates involving aircraft regulation.[91]

On October 21, 2010, at the age of 75, Inhofe landed his Cessna on a closed runway at a south Texas airport, scattering construction workers who ran for their lives. In a recorded telephone call, the men's supervisor told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that Inhofe "scared the crap out of" the workers, adding that the Cessna "damn near hit" a truck. And the airport manager, also speaking to the FAA in a recorded telephone call, opined: "I've got over 50 years flying, three tours of Vietnam, and I can assure you I have never seen such a reckless disregard for human life in my life. Something needs to be done. This guy is famous for these violations."[92]

In response to the incident, Inhofe stated that he "did nothing wrong", and accused the FAA of "agency overreach" and causing a "feeling of desperation" in him. He agreed to take a remedial training program, and the FAA agreed not to pursue legal action against him if he took the program. In July 2011, Inhofe introduced a bill to create a "Pilot's Bill of Rights" which he said would increase fairness in FAA enforcement actions.[93] The bill was passed in 2012.[94]

Taxpayer-funded travel

Inhofe has made multiple foreign trips, especially to Africa, on missions that he described as "a Jesus thing" and that were paid for by the U.S. government. He has used these trips for activities on behalf of The Fellowship, a Christian organization.[95] Inhofe has said that his trips included some governmental work but also involved "the political philosophy of Jesus, something that had been put together by Doug Coe, the leader of The Fellowship...It's all scripturally based." Inhofe used his access as a Senator to pursue religious goals.[96]

Federal disaster relief

Inhofe has consistently voted against federal disaster relief, most notably in the case of relief for the 24 states affected by Hurricane Sandy.[97] However, he argues for federal aid when natural disasters hit Oklahoma.[98] In defense of his decision to vote against a relief fund for Hurricane Sandy, but not in Oklahoma after tornadoes ravaged the state in May 2013, he claimed the situations were "totally different" the difference being the Sandy funding involved "Everybody getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won't happen in Oklahoma."[99] Inhofe pointedly did not thank President Obama for his attention to the tragedy in his state, so as to not be compared to Chris Christie.[100]

Personal life

In 1959, Inhofe married Kay Kirkpatrick, with whom he has four children.

On November 10, 2013, Inhofe's son, Dr. Perry Inhofe, died in a plane crash in Owasso, Oklahoma. Inhofe was flying alone for the first time since training in a newly acquired plane.[101]

Inhofe was the first recipient of the U.S. Air Force Academy's Character and Leadership Award for his character and leadership in public service.

^Text of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006/Division A/Title X), SEC. 1003. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT: In this section, the term "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

^John S. Dryzek; Richard B. Norgaard; David Schlosberg (18 August 2011). The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press. p. 153. ISBN978-0-19-956660-0. The single most prominent Republican when it comes to climate change denial is Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, famous for claiming in a Senate speech that global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

^Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?, Linda Killian, 1999. Basic Books. "From there it was on to Hominy, where Inhofe walked up and down Main Street and stopped by the local coffee shop to shake some hands. He told the morning customers the Senate race could be summed up by the "three Gs - God, gays, and guns." Inhofe asserted Dave McCurdy was a liberal Washington insider out of touch with what Oklahomans care about, who was against prayer in schools, for gays in the military and gun control, and who voted with Bill Clinton more than 80 percent of the time."

^Jacob Weisberg. "It's Even Worse For Clinton Than You Think," New York Magazine, November 21, 1994, page 41. Inhofe describes how the phrase came to be in The Associated Press via USA Today, Ron Jenkins, September 18, 2008. "Inhofe, in a telephone interview from Washington, recalled that 14 years ago he was told by a small group in Hugo that he would carry McCurtain County, a Democratic stronghold in southeastern Oklahoma. He said he asked the Hugo residents why he would win, "and they said because of the three G's. They're the ones who came up with that and it became almost a chant out there."

^Taranto, James.Opinion Section of The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, November 11, 2003. Originally appeared on Tallahassee.com, in a now inaccessible article by Bill Cotterell, who wrote: "Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said Tuesday that Southerners must stop basing their votes on "race, guns, God and gays" and forge a multiracial coalition that focuses next year's presidential election on jobs, health care and a foreign policy reflecting American values."

^The Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?, Linda Killian, 1999. Basic Books. "Inhofe, one of Congress's few certified commercial pilots, has been crisscrossing the state in his 1969 Piper Aztec and managed to visit almost every town in Oklahoma before the end of the campaign."

^The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association says this about Inhofe: "An active pilot for more than 50 years, aircraft owner and AOPA member, Sen. Jim Inhofe has been at the forefront of every aviation debate since arriving in Congress in 1986, offering his real-world perspective. He was a major force behind passage of the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 that is credited with reviving aviation manufacturing in America. During the current battle over user fees, Inhofe spent countless hours working behind the scenes to educate his colleagues in the Senate about the negative impacts of a user fee-funded system. He even took the unusual step of testifying before the Senate's aviation subcommittee to explain his opposition to user fees and the detrimental impact it would have on general aviation. Oklahoma pilots can be proud of Senator Inhofe's accomplishments and dedication to work on issues affecting pilots."